Its been a while...

Hello fellow reader or possible rando!

It has been a long time since I've written anything on this blog and that is because of a combination of family matters and a shift in interests. Time to catch up! My last post was in October as I was designing the Chinese Orbat for "Skirmish Sangin". I played it a couple of times with the Chinese Orbat and really enjoyed the system but my focus went from miniatures and wargaming to martial arts and fitness. Thus, the blog was soon temporarily forgotten.

Now, after quite a big move for myself, I'm back into wargaming! But with a slight twist... You see, where I'm at right now it is hard to get miniatures or even toy soldiers so I've taken up sculpting and am using all that I can to sculpt my own soldiers and vehicles because paper, wire, and clay are all cheap here. What genre? World War II but more specifically the Second Sino-Japanese War!

Now the game system I plan on using is going to be the FUBAR one page rules that I will slowly house rule into my own system. Now if you look online I'm sure you can find these rules as well as many other people who are house ruling it into their own system so what will I do to make it different? I don't quite know yet. The setting is pretty unique and I want to add some RPG-lite elements in there for a campaign system that the whole game will revolve around. But so far that's all I have idea wise.

Now for the miniatures I've been working on. They are roughly 15-20mm tall and all sculpted using a cheap air-dry clay that supposedly said it would hold detail well but I've found at this small of a scale the clay has difficulty sticking to my wire frames.

The armatures. use clay for the base and add two pieces of wire for the feet that I superglue together and let dry for a day.

Once dry I add the basic clay to the legs where I create the feet too and let this dry. The legs are supposed to be 0.5cm tall but they do vary.

I then make the torso 0.5cm tall and let that dry. Finally I add the arms and head to the body. I've found that using wire armatures sometimes help and sometimes don't help with the arms depending on the pose I'm putting them in. Lastly I give my odd guys a paint job and weapons.

For my custom tanks I've made a prototype template by converting as if 15mm = 1.8m (around 6ft). I might change this to be 20mm = 1.8m later on but all the templates I've made so far follow the 15mm ratio.

This template is supposed to be for a Renault FT that the Japanese forces will use. The tracks and hull are made of paper while the turret and wheels are made of clay to add weight.

Here you can see the wire I use to attach the pairs of wheels together.

Then I made the side armor out of clay but then covered it with a piece of notecard. again this is to add weight to the tank so that it won't be blown around easily.

After a quick paint job the miniatures are done! To the left is a 15mm miniature and to the right is a 20mm miniature. (I measure from the bottom of the feet to the top of the head/helmet)

As you see my sculpting skills are not the best but I have enjoyed making my clay army. At the moment I have 20 Chinese infantry made, 1 Pak Cannon, and 1 Renault FT. In the WIP stage I have 20 Japanese Infantry armatures and I have the official Renault FT and Panzer I 15mm templates on my computer yet to be printed and tested. This has certainly brought out the true childlike creative side of me and I suggest that you make some clay soldiers just to see how you like them at the end of it. Most of my details are "old school" on the miniature meaning I paint them on but the details I'm able to sculpt I feel proud of. You'll see me playtesting with these guys alot and have I mentioned I like 15mm?

再见，
Jonah!